No One Is Going To Remember You

Anton tells the story of a person who recently was leaving harsh words on Anton's business. In the end, the guy ended up purchasing a course that was NOT Anton's and the guy did not even know what he purchased. This made Anton think....how will a potential customer remember you if they leave your site but are ready to purchase later?

Focus on making sure that you are everywhere as a business owner and get people to your site anyway you can.

Do not just focus on re-targeting and cold traffic. Do not just run your normal ads for your top products. Also run search text ads on Google or Bing as well as Facebook ads.

When they come back to search again for that product, that search text ad will take them back to your site.

Yo, what's up, everybody? Anton Kraly here from ecommercelifestyle.com. Welcome to the episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, coming to you from the car. Again, on the iPhone on the way in to the office on a pretty overcast Thursday morning. But nice weather again in Austin. It was freezing here for a while. Now, we're back to 60 degrees which is my ideal weather so I'm not complaining. But yeah, I wanted to get a quick message out there for everybody that listens to this and ideally, I'm assuming, for everybody that owns an e-commerce store or really, any type of business. The reason I wanted to talk about this topic today ... I think I'm going to call the episode No one's Going to Remember You. But the reason I wanted to talk about this topic is because yesterday, we had some, for lack of a better word, I mean, I'll be nice about it and call them a psychopath, going around on all different review websites and just leaving a terrible review for one of my businesses.

Now, here's the thing. Right? If we dropped the ball, if we had a bad experience with our customer and they had a right to be angry then we do whatever we can to, of course, make it right. Right? The goal is don't have that happen. Here's the thing, though. We have Google Alerts set up so that when our business names get mentioned we get to go check out the reviews. What we saw is this person that was posting all of these reviews, based on their name that they used, was not a customer of ours. Okay? Couldn't find them in our database for that business, not in our email database, not in our store database, just nowhere to be found. What we did was reach out ... By the way, this is not the first time this has happened. This is just something that I thought would be relevant to share because it just happened so recently.

But what we did is we reached out to this person via one of the review platforms and we said, "Hey, listen, very sorry you had this experience. Can you please give us your order number and the email you used when placing your order so that we can look into this and make it right." It turns out that this person did not order from any of our businesses. Now, it wasn't a competitor trying to go out there and bash us. It wasn't just someone that was just crazy and had lost their mind. It was someone who placed an order with another website, had a terrible experience and forgot where they ordered from and somehow mixed things up and thought that they had ordered from us. Okay? They placed their order. They took out their credit card. They spent over $1,000 with one of my companies and they ... I'm sorry, they thought they spent $1,000 with one of my companies but they did it with someone else's and even then, they did not remember.

Listen guys, this is how things work now in 2018 moving into 2019. People are literally so busy and so consumed with checking Facebook at the same time they're watching a YouTube video. At the same time, they're place an order online that they don't even know what they're doing when they're making big purchase decisions. Okay? The reason that I think this is important is one, because just know as an entrepreneur, this is something that you will deal with. You'll have to have it resolved and it's going to take hours out of your day. But, yeah. So be prepared. It's one of the things that isn't so fun about entrepreneurship. But the other reason, and problem, the more important reason, is if people are literally forgetting or mistaking where they ordered from to begin with, then why do we think as online retailers that people will even remember our stores if they maybe visited us at lunch, the website at lunch, and wanted to come back later?
Or how should we even expect that they're going to remember us if they went to our website a week earlier from a Google search, really liked the product we had for sale, and then a week later we're ready to buy? What are the chances that they're going to be able to just think, "Oh, let me go to ..." Whatever. I'm not going to say the business, but, "Let me just go to antonssite.com and place the order. There's no way they're going to remember. Again, it's just because of how busy we are. This is where you really have to focus on making sure that you are everywhere as a business owner and that you get people to your site in as many ways as possible.

Now, I could make this really basic at a foundational level and just talk to you about retargeting. I'm assuming, if you're listening to this you know how important that is. Again, the person comes to your site. They leave. You get them back. We do it on every single channel we can. We're on Google Display Network. We're all over Google Ads. We are on YouTube. We're literally everywhere we can be. We're following up with email and Facebook Messenger when we can to again, make sure people don't forget us because they will. Right? First of all, that's step one. Now, the other thing that you should do that's super important is not just focus on retargeting cold traffic to not have them forget, but when you know what your best selling products are, which you will. You'll know your top 20% in a relatively short amount of time if you're moving any kind of volume on your website. The step there, what you do is don't just run your normal type of ads for those products.

For example, if the product was ... I don't know. I'm driving to work right now. If the product was an Audi steering wheel, if that's what you were selling, don't just have your Audi steering wheels in Google product listing ads. If that's one of your best sellers, then also run search text ads on Google for them. Run search text ads on Bing for them. Run Facebook ads to people that are interested in Audi. Right? You're not doing that because those are going to have your highest return on ad spend. You're doing that because you know they're one of your best sellers and the people that find you originally, that don't place their order right away, they are going to forget who you are.

So don't just remarket to them but also have cold campaigns that reach out to these people. Because let's just say, again, we'll use the Audi steering wheel. I sold them. Someone was on my website last week. They need to buy a new one because whatever, they totaled their car, knock on wood. They need a new steering wheel. They're on my website. They think about it. They're like, "Oh, perfect. I love antonssteeringwheels.com and I'm going to by this one next week once my insurance company reimbursed me." Then what happens? A week rolls around. They get their check from the insurance company. They go online and they don't remember antonssteeringwheels.com so they type in Audi steering wheel again. Then, they see the first search text ad that's not even a remarketing ad that's for the product. They click that.

You know what? If customers forget where they're actually spending thousands of dollars, then they've definitely forgot the store name was they were at. If they click on the first ad that time, there's a really good chance that store will get the sale. Moral of the story is customers and people in this day and age have no memory. It's going to cause you problems in the sense that maybe people will call you and email you freaking out about how you screwed up when they never even bought from you and they think you're someone else. It's going to cause you problems in lost return on ad spend because even qualified customers aren't always ready to buy right away and they're not going to remember to come back to you.

So step one is make sure your remarketing is on point. Do everything that I talk about in Drop Ship Lifestyle and the Drop Ship Blueprint for that. Step two as you're ramping up your ad budgets is expand your cold ad types for your main top 20% of products. Again, I'm talking Google search text ads. I'm talking even cold YouTube ads. I'm talking Bing ads. I'm talking Facebook ads. Just be everywhere because people have no memory. That's a little rant/tip for the day. I'm actually not even at the office right now. I'm in the Starbucks office across the street. I'm going to go get a cup of coffee, get in and start the day. Hope you all have great days. I will talk to you all in the next episode of eCommerce Lifestyle. See you, everybody.